


She's Hiding Something

by PhantomTraveler



Series: Long Enough [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, Schmoop, reckless use of an OFC, strange medical problems, talk of past physical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:58:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8617861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomTraveler/pseuds/PhantomTraveler
Summary: KT has been making great progress with her physical therapy, but it’s becoming clear to Dean she’s hiding something. As misunderstanding’s get out of hand will this finally be when the young hunter leaves the brothers?





	

She’s Hiding Something

 

Dean was just finishing up stretching KTs shoulder, they were about 16 months post surgery, she had been doing great the past few months. He was able to stretch her shoulder in a range of motion that while not full range was definitely considered functional movement. It was still the external rotation with a bent elbow that was causing trouble, and Dean could tell the past few weeks it seemed to be causing even more pain then usual. KT wouldn’t say anything about it, but he could tell. Dean finished the last stretch and helped KT sit up,

“ _And that’s why you have a cow swallow a magnet_ ”

Dean shook his head,

“ _I still think you’re making that up, cows eating magnets_.”

Dean was amazed he had not run out of topics to ask KT about while doing the range of motion stretches. He had made the mistake today of asking her if it was true that farmers fed cows magnets figuring she would have snorted and called him an idiot, instead she had launched into an explanation of something called hardware disease and how cows would eat small bits of metal for some god forsaken reason and it would stab them from the inside. Dean went to move the treatment table out so he could begin massaging KTs shoulder and breaking up the scar tissue. KT started to walk towards the door,

“ _Good job today Dean but I think we can skip the massage.”_

_“KT you know that’s one of the biggest reason’s you have the range of motion that you do.”_

_“I know, I know, but see I have this new case coming in today at the clinic and it’s really complicated. I meant to research it last night but the night just got away from me and I really need to get this work done_.”

Dean frowned,

“ _I really think we should stick to the routine_.”

KT widened her eyes, practically pleading with Dean,

“ _I know, and I promise tomorrow we’ll do just that, but I really need to go over this file_.”

Dean sighed,

“ _Alright, but just this once_.”

KT was already heading out the door. He heard her start down the steps awkwardly,

“ _Hey! Wait for me! You know it’s not safe for you to try and head down the stairs on your own after PT_ ”

Dean caught up with KT and picked her up, the second he reached the bottom of the stairs KT was back on her feet and walking quickly to her room. About a minute later she was dressed in her scrubs with her messenger bag over her good shoulder.

“ _Dean I’m going to walk to the office and look through that file, see you later.”_

_“KT wait, I’ll drive you.”_

_“No I want to walk, got to increase my stamina to get geared up for running 2 miles right? I’ll just see you at work later today don’t worry about it.”_

Dean was going to protest more but KT had already walked out the door. Dean was starting to get annoyed, KT was definitely hiding something, Dean just hoped he could figure out what it was before she did something stupid.

            The next day Dean was once again finishing up stretching KTs shoulder. He helped her sit up,

“ _Alright KT lets get that scar tissue worked on.”_

_“You know that case from yesterday, they’re coming back in and it really is pretty complicated_.”

Dean crossed his arms,

“ _We’re not skipping another day, I’m not taking no for an answer on this one. Now I’m stepping out for a moment and when I come back in you better be on that table.”_

Dean stormed out of the room and composed himself, when he walked back into the home gym he found KT laying on the treatment table, he could see from all the way across the room then every muscle in her body was tense. He turned on his ipod doc and pulled the sheet down her back. His eyes immediately noticed a large bruise on her left side covering her ribs right below her shoulder. Dean lightly touched the bruised area and KT let out a gasp of air _._

_“What happened here_?”

KT tried to move away from Dean’s hand as she spluttered out an explanation,

“ _Oh, that, it’s no big deal Brutus was in yesterday, you remember him, the big Mastiff? He had another ear infection and he got a little rough when I tried to look in his ear, I bumped pretty hard into the handrail in the exam room.”_

_“Why didn’t you say anything yesterday?”_

_“It was like the last appointment of the day anyway, what difference was it going to make? Look Dean, dog’s are going to knock me around, it’s part of the job, you can’t freak every time it happens.”_

_“Just tell me next time.”_

_“Fine_.”

Dean finished massaging KTs shoulder and walked out of the room. He was even more agitated then before, KT was definitely hiding something.

            Later that evening Dean was sitting down with Sam on the couch enjoying a beer. Dean couldn’t get his conversation with KT out of his head,

“ _Hey Sam, did you see Brutus with KT the other day?”_

_“Huh? The drooley Mastiff? No, I saw he was on the schedule but when I went to follow KT she told me he just needed a rabies certificate signed so he could get his state license renewed, and since she gave him the vaccine at his last visit no exam was needed, Mrs. Medow just brought him because he loves to drool all over KT.”_

_“Damn it.”_

_“What Dean?”_

_“KTs hiding something, she told me she got this large bruise on her ribs yesterday from Brutus throwing her against the handrail while she checked his ears_.”

Sam sat back against the couch and let out a low whistle,

“ _Well, that’s not good…do you think she’s hunting without us_?”

Dean choked on his beer,

“ _She wouldn’t think of it, would she? She knows how dangerous that is_.”

Sam shrugged,

“ _How many times in the past, you know, before the accident, did she tell us that she worked alone, that she had to hunt on her own.”_

_“She wouldn’t_ ”

“ _Look Dean, you said it yourself, she’s been getting a lot better in the past few months, maybe she finally feels well enough that she thinks she can hunt again_.”

Dean’s voice was dark, and predatory when he next spoke,

“ _If she’s hunting alone, how long until she leaves us_ ”

Sam went very still as he thought about what Dean had just said, he hung his head,

“ _I don’t know Dean, but you know as well as I do, if she wants to leave, she will_.”

Sam and Dean sat quietly on the couch drinking their beers, both lost in their own thoughts. Eventually they retired to their bedrooms, neither man slept well that night as they thought about the hunter they had been living with for well over a year and the fact that she may up and leave them without a care in the world.

            The next day Dean was still mulling over his conversation with his brother. As he stretched KTs arm in an external rotation he could feel her breathing getting more hitched, he could also see that the muscles were bulging out at the site of her rib injury. He once again wondered what the hell had done that to KT, and why she wouldn’t talk about it. He held the stretch, he could see the blood had drained from KTs face, the stretch was hurting her so much she was on the verge of passing out, of course she wasn’t telling Dean that. Dean saw red as he thought about all the things she wasn’t telling him and he pushed the stretch just a little farther, maybe for just a second he wanted to hurt her a bit. He heard a pop followed by a gasp but still KT wouldn’t tell him to stop, her whole body was shaking and her eyes began to roll back in her head. Dean couldn’t take it anymore, he dropped her arm and stood up from the chair he was sitting on.

“ _Jesus Christ KT would you have let me rip the whole damn arm off before you said it was hurting you?_

_“It’s fine.”_

_“It’s fine?!, is it fine when you lie about the pain you’re in? Is it fine when you go off on hunts on your own and lie about it? Is it fine when you finally up and leave us without telling us?!”_

KT gapped at Dean, Sam had returned home from the library and heard his brother yelling upstairs, he had run upstairs to see his brother standing facing KT, his body coiled like a snake ready to strike, KT was sitting on the treatment table her head was hanging and she was clutching her left side. Sam entered the room and held up his hands,

“ _Hey, hey Dean, what’s going on man_?”

Dean never took his eyes of the woman on the table,

“ _It’s fine Sam, KT and I are just having a little conversation about her truth issues_.”

KT hadn’t looked up once, she spoke in a low broken voice,

“ _I knew if you found out you were going to leave me, I couldn’t tell you, but you found out anyway.”_

_“I knew it, you were going to walk right out that door and not tell us. What were you going to do? Just walk back to your apartment and pretend you never lived here? Or were you going to skip town in one of your burner cars, leave us to wonder where you were until one day you ended up in one of the obituaries_?”

KT finally looked up, her eyes a mixture of pain and confusion,

“ _What? I’m not leaving you, you’re leaving me_.”

Sam walked over to Dean and put a hand on his shoulder,

“ _Dean, listen to what she’s saying, I think we’ve missed something’s_.”

KT continued on,

“ _You found out, I didn’t hide it well enough and now you’re leaving me. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough for you. I didn’t want you to leave me, I tried so hard to keep you from leaving me_.”

As Dean heard what KT was saying the fight went right out of him, he sat down on the chair next to KT and put his hand on her knee,

“ _Sweetheart, you aren’t making any sense, what did we find out?”_

_“That the monster hurt me.”_

_“Why would you go off on a hunt alone?”_

_“I’ve always hunted alone.”_

_“Yes but we’re a team now, why would you go off on your own now_?”

KT scrunched up her face in confusion,

“ _I haven’t gone hunting since the abduction.”_

_“Then how did you get hurt?”_

_“It’s old, it’s just, come to light now apparently_.”

“ _Ok seriously sweetheart you are not making any sense, start from the beginning_.”

KT looked down at her hands, which were in her lap, when she finally spoke she spoke so quietly both brother’s had to lean in to hear her,

“ _Back when I was first grabbed, when Victor had me chained up, remember how I dislocated my shoulder to try and escape_?”

KT briefly looked at Dean who nodded and motioned for her to continue,

“ _So there are three ways a shoulder can dislocate, most commonly it dislocates forward, I’m sure you’ve both experienced that one, second it can dislocate from the side, not even half as common but it can happen if you fell in an exact way, and finally, it can dislocate out the back, that method is almost impossible to happen unless the stars align perfectly, and you’re incredibly unlucky. Now I couldn’t dislocate my shoulder in the front or the side, it would have been too obvious to Victor. The way my arms were behind my back I could force it to dislocate backwards, but both to my advantage and disadvantage I have hypermobile joints, which means I can dislocate my joints very easily but my muscles work very hard to keep the loose joints in place. When I forced the shoulder out of place the muscles fought against it and ended up shoving the scapula down and under the two top ribs, effectively dislocating the ribs. Every time after that, when my shoulder dislocated, so did the ribs. When I met with the first doctor he told me it was something that should heal on it’s own if they were immobilized long enough, after the surgery it felt like they had knitted themselves back into place, but these past few weeks, since we got more mobility back into my shoulder the muscles have begun pushing at my ribs, they’ve started dislocating again. That’s what I’ve been hiding. You’ve been so excited about all the progress I’ve made I didn’t want you to know that I’ve had such a set back. I figured that might be the thing that finally convinced you guys to leave me._ ”

Dean stared at the woman sitting in front of him, he was baffled and horrified by what she had just told him. He tried very hard not to ever think of the video he had seen of her being tortured by the sadistic werewolf. The fact that there were still aspects of that time that KT was keeping secret broke his heart, and annoyed him.

“ _You know for someone with so many degrees you sure can be stupid sometimes_.”

KT looked at the man who has smiling sadly at her,

“ _What?”_

_“We’re not going to leave you because you had a set back, we’re not going to leave you period. We thought you had gone off to hunt on your own and were leaving us”_

_“I’m sorry, I just, panicked_.”

Dean stood up and wrapped his arms around the woman, she rested her head on his chest and returned his embrace, as she shifted the stretch of her arm pulled on her ribs. She let out a hiss and pulled away, Dean looked down at her in confusion before he saw her clutching her side, his face crumbled when he realized what was occurring,

“ _Did your ribs dislocate again when I pushed on your arm too hard?”_

_“Yeah, but it isn’t your fault, this has happened a lot, and I should have said something_.”

Sam grabbed an ace bandage from one of the cabinets in the room. Dean palpated KTs side, occasionally eliciting a hiss from the woman. When he had a better idea of what was wrong with her side he motioned for Sam to hold onto her. Dean counted backward from three in his head before shoving the ribs back into place. KT let out a surprised gasp, Sam handed the ace bandage to Dean who made quick work of wrapping KTs ribs. When he was satisfied he stood up and scooped the woman into his arms, he carried her straight downstairs and to the couch in the living room. Sam hurried down behind him and sat down on the couch, Dean set KT down on the couch cushion and Sam pulled her back against him. Dean disappeared into the kitchen. KT feeling awkward, tried to make light of the situation,

“ _You know Sam, you could really make some extra money as a living body pillow, I’m sure woman everywhere would pay for the chance to lounge against you_.”

Sam chuckled,

“ _Yeah well, only very special people can get the privilege of using me as a living pillow_.”

Dean returned with a plate of sandwiches, he set them on KTs lap. He lifted her legs and sat down on the couch placing her feet back in his lap. He reached over and grabbed one of the sandwiches from the plate and started eating. Soon KT and Sam followed suite. After a while Dean turned on the television and the three hunters sat in companionable silence. As they watched some random sitcom Sam didn’t know the name of he reached over and muted the television, something had been weighing on Sam’s mind for a while.

“ _So I have one more question for you KT_.”

KT took a breath in and let it out slowly,

“ _Shoot.”_

_“How’d you get your ribs back in place on your own?”_

_“Oh…I wasn’t lying when I said I got that bruise from the handrail at the clinic.”_

_“You seriously rammed your side against the handrail at work?”_

_“Well…yeah…how else was I supposed to fix the problem_?”

Dean rolled his eyes,

“ _I’m going to say it again, for someone with so many degrees you sure can be stupid sometimes.”_

_“Stupid like a fox.”_

_“That doesn’t even make sense.”_

_“Neither does your face”_

_“What? My face makes perfect sense”_

As KT and Dean continued to bicker Sam leaned over and unmuted the television, he knew from experience this could take a while.


End file.
